Powdered food compositions are well known to those skilled in the art. Thus, for example, "Tang" is a commercially available powdered, synthetic organic drink.
Digestion is the chemical process by which nutrient molecules are converted within a body to forms usable by the cells. The chemical reactions occurring during digestion are facilitated by enzymes, which are catalysts, usually formed of protein, which have specific actions and optimum activities at a definite pH value.
Enzymes are produced by the D.N.A. replication process in living beings. There is a substantial amount of evidence indicating that the aging process, in part, results from a reduction in the amount of enzyme produced by a living body. Thus, as is disclosed at page 14 of Humbart Santillo's "Food Enyzmes" (Hohm Press, Prescott, Arizona, 1991), "A further experiment in relation to saliva and its amylase content was performed . . . . Used in this experiment were young adults from the ages of 21 to 31 and another group ranging from age 69 to 100. It was shown that the younger group had 30 times more amylase in their saliva than the elderly group."
There thus is a need for nutritional supplements which, in addition to nutrients, contain enzymes which will facilitate the digestion of the nutrients. It would be especially desirable if such food supplements would contain enzymes which could function in the stomach and/or the intestines of a user and which would not be destroyed in the process of digestion.
Most enzymes have an optimum pH value at which they function, and for most enzymes this pH value is in the range of from about 4.5 to about 8.0; see, e.g., page 354 of John M. DeMan's "Principles of Food Chemistry" (Van Nostrand Reinhold Company, New York, New York, 1980). It has been said that ". . . the presence of too many hydrogen or hydroxy ions interferes with the conforming shape of the enzymes;" see, e.g., page 44 of Gabrille I. Edwards' "Biology the Easy Way" (Barrons Educational Series, Inc., New York, New York, 1990). The stomach of human beings contains gastric juice, which has a pH of about 1.0. Most enzymes are inactivated in the presence of such an acidic environment; thus, food supplements contains such enzymes will not necessarily be readily digested within the stomach.
Proteases are enzymes that split proteins into proteoses and peptones. Many enzymes, which are immune to attack by proteases in one environment, are susceptible to such attack in another environment; and thus many enzymes are destroyed when introduced into a human body.
It is an object of this invention to provide a food supplement which can be stored indefinitely at room temperature while retaining its potency.
It is another object of this invention to provide a food supplement which has substantially greater nutritive value than many of the raw foods from which it is derived.
It is yet another object of this invention to provide a food supplement which can readily be digested at least in part in the stomach of its user.
It is yet another object of this invention to provide a food supplement which furnishes one or more enzymes to the body of its user which are not destroyed during digestion.